


Flare

by The_Magical_Crawdad



Category: Homestuck, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: End of Act Five, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-28
Updated: 2011-10-28
Packaged: 2017-10-25 00:58:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Magical_Crawdad/pseuds/The_Magical_Crawdad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well, that's it then. It's over. She's dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, that's it then. It's over. She's dead.

Well, that's it then. It's over. She's dead.

But you're not.

You leave her there, on the rooftop, brilliantly white gun discarded at her side. It might have made you happy, once, but all you feel now is gutted. Tired, sore, _alone_. Everyone is dead. You're the last living thing, and soon enough not even the world will exist. It'll all just be _gone_. Somehow, you can't bring yourself to care. You simply leave, gently descend to street level, feeling every single wound you'd ever suffered at once. Underneath that is cold, cold, and you wonder if this is how dying starts.

You don't go home, because home doesn't exist now. Home was in your Crew, not the multiple safehouses or the club. You go to Sleuth's apartment instead. You don't know what you're hoping to find, or if you're hoping at all. The sky is blue blue blue, but it doesn't scare you now. You push open the door, which has never been locked in the entire time you''ve known him. There's blood, bloody handprints along the walls. You fail to be disturbed or alarmed. Nothing gets in as you follow the trail of red, you feel as clear and empty as the sky.

You find him in a small pool of his own blood. He's leaning against the tiny piano that dominates his living room, one arm pressed into his gut and the other laying useless at his side. Your throat moves painfully for a moment, and you think you must have spoken because he stirs, faintly, cracks his impossibly green eyes and finds you.

 _Not dead yet_ the thought hits you like a hammerblow, right between the eyes. You manage to find the wall with a hand as you stagger, a thin noise you don't recognize coming from your throat which is impossibly tight and raw. You spy a bottle of cheap scotch on the coffee table, and snatch it up on your way to him.

Somehow you end up on the piano stool instead of slumped beside him, and the ugly thing emits a noise like light dying. You take a long breath of the burning alcohol and then pass the bottle down to him. "Drink." You command hoarsely, holding the bottle as still as you can so he can grab it in his free hand. It takes him three tries, but he eventuall manages to get the bottle to his mouth. You're not sure how much help he's going to get out of it, what with the gut wound and all, but fuck it's not like there's any reason not to drink, it being the end of the universe and all. You barely catch the sigh, but you do catch the bottle. You place it on the floor beside the stool and lean in against the ivories again. You don't mean to set your fingers to them properly, don't mean to play, but you do. It's catharsis, release, the end of everything. It's sad and small, though the notes seem drawn out somehow, and your heartbeat sounds like a static crush. Maybe you have a concussion you think blindly, and the last heavy note lingers in your ears as you slide down beside Sleuth.

Your voice is hot and harsh and empty, alone. "I -" you begin, but he stirrs slightly and leans against you. His arm slides wet across his gut and then around you, and you can feel the sticky-warm slick of his blood against your back, even through your jacket. You don't see the way his trenchcoat is absolutely stained in it, don't see the jagged gash across his midsection that could only have come from a crowbar.

You only see his eyes, his too green gaze, gone cloudy in pain and the ebb of life. "I know, I know," he whispers against your lips. You see the shape of your name in his, behind the bloodsmear, and you kiss it away. It is everything you could have wanted and not enough, you don't want it to be over yet, don't want to _die_. You break apart because his breath hitches in a wet way and you can't breath around all the unsaid things in your throat. You rest forehead to forehead, and his eyes don't leave yours as they grow bright, like a flare, then dim. You both breath out, simultaneously. .

And then there is nothing else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woops I accidentally bawled my eyes out while writing this. I was, actually listening to Flare (Track 3 of Homestuck: Volume 8), which made it all that much worse.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Today has been a monumentally bad day. And even that is an understatement.

Today has been a monumentally bad day. And even that is an understatement.

It had started well enough, you crawled out of bed just after eight. You had breakfast, which was half a peice of cold toast and two cups of scalding coffee, like you do every day. You went to check in on the offices and it all went to shit from there. It feels hard to remember what happened through the grey edge of pain, and you sit for long minutes until you remember.

It started with Pickle Inspector - you'd found him laying bonelessly across his desk, head at a completely wrong angle. You checked it out, unable to process what you were really seeing, taking refuge in habit. His neck had been broken, or maybe crushed, you weren't sure. You backed out of the room, then, and was noisily sick in the corridor. You remember stumbling into Ace's office (which sent of alarms, he never once left his door open) and backing out blindly. The only thought you had room for in your head then was _they can't be dead_ , you couldn't even stay in the same building. You had to get out.

So you did.

You were blindsided by Fin and Trace, didn't even have time to pull your key or the knife you keep up your sleeve. But you fought back, you had to, and by the time you were ready to call up the dormant blaze of green inside your head Crowbar was there too. You felt lines of fire erupt across your shoulders as he laid into you with the heavy red steel, and remember retching weakly when the sharp tip of the curved end caught you across the gut. You remember the blood most of all, how hot it was (or were you flushing cold then), how bright red on the road it looked. They didn't even finish you off, just left you there. So you limped home, not caring if you made the gaping wound across your midsection worse. You just stuffed it with your coat and clamped an arm across it. There wasn't much else you could do, really.

You remember getting into your apartment as a grey haze. Everything is grey now, even the feeling of your blood pumping out under your hand, even the heaviness that settles across your shoulders and behind your eyes. You wish you could sleep, but somehow death doesn't come for you. You imagine the black cloaked figure, remember how Death looked so much like Pickle Inspector it really wasn't funny. Remember how he loomed in the doorway just like that.

You jerk out of your fugue when you hear a strangled gasp. It wasn't yours, you think sluggishly, and your focus shifts in suddenly and leaves your head spinning. Slick stands in the doorway to your living room. He looks grey, as grey as you feel. The agony in his eyes looks as worn as your own, and you breath shallow as he slouches his way into the piano's stool. There's the heavy noise of sin, and then he's offering a bottle to you. You want to laugh, because it is so _Slick_ to give cheap booze to a dying man. Your hands and arms are heavy and it takes you a few tries to grasp the bottle. You don't spill any when you take a long and burning swallow, feel the fire ignite in your gut. You can't even think as you try to breath around the iron agony.

Slick begins to play something, and it cuts right though the heavy sear and settles in your thoughts (what's left of them), plucking memories and thoughts from the grey dullness. You listen, and the notes are somehow distorted and sharp, and your breathing is harsh over it because you can't seem to get enough air. It is alone and cold and brilliant like a distant star, full of regret. You know how that feels, you'd be feeling it if you weren't bleeding out, weren't fading away. You are shaken from the ever-increasing laspe between thoughts when Slick sits beside you.

"I -" he starts, but you don't need to hear it to understand it. It's written across his face, in the dull grey dispair in his eyes, the defeated line of his shoulders and the way resignation twists his mouth. He wants more _time_ , just like you, isn't ready to give up the ghost like you. Isn't ready to _die_. Your arm slides easily off your still-oozing gut wound, slick with blood as it is, and ou wrap it around him, because you need to bridge the distance between you and Spades Slick, the cold and dying purple-white star.

"I know," you whisper against his lips, and you can feel some wild surge inside you, and you're not sure if this is what dying feels like or if this is what fear feels like. He kisses you, hungry and desperate and scared, alone. You feel grey, like the world, like him, like the need to breath. The bright green fire inside your head blazes once, but it is too far away now to reach for. You feel your breath slide out of your lungs and you have time to think

 _I love yo-_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woops this was only meant to be a single chapter suddenly more writing OOPS?


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You breath in, _really_ breath in, and the air is sweet like a cold dawn or maybe the best day of your life.

His hand is warm in yours, you think fleetingly. You breath in, _really_ breath in, and the air is sweet like a cold dawn or maybe the best day of your life. Death, shrouded in the darkness that clings to him like smoke, stands before a heavy, plain door. Written across it in plain brass letters is _Afterlife_.

This is it, you think, tightening your grip on his hand. You feel an answering squeeze, and you both breath in at the same time as the heavy door swings open.

There is a brief moment of blinding light, and then the sound of a heavy door closing quietly. You're not sure when you stepped across the threshold, but it doesn't matter because he's with you when the light fades to manageable levels.

The afterlife looks a lot like Midnight City.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOOPS WE'RE DONE HERE FOLKS.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fade Away](https://archiveofourown.org/works/284843) by [SelanPike](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SelanPike/pseuds/SelanPike)




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